PowerPoint slides have transformed completely over the last few years. What was acceptable once looks mundane today. One of the trends today is to use big and bold graphic elements and text. These bolder looking slides will make you look more confident and dependable in front of your audience. Here is an example. This slide is quite good in itself. But the chart is small and does not make all that impact. A bolder version of the same looks like this (see below). Stretch the chart across the slide (from the left to the right) so that it covers the entire slide and bleeds off the edge giving it a much bigger feel. More confident and visually more powerful and attention grabbing.   Here is another example. The first side was part of a deck I recently received from a client of mine in India. This slide talks about an event that my client was organizing across India. We decided to go bolder and the modified slide is the one you can see below. In this slide the elements ge...

Demo Days provide your startup an excellent opportunity to face a large gathering and share your business idea with the world. You have gone through the grid, prepared and are now facing investors and peers as you pitch. For many startups, their demo day presentation is often the first time they give a formal pitch on a stage. The tension is palpable and mistakes do happen. I have attended various demo day presentations and the recent one was as soon as 3 days back. Let me point out 7 mistakes startups make on their demo day presentation. Not communicating what they actually do This mistake, though surprising, is very commonplace. While mentoring startups I come across so many pitches where the business itself is not clear. You have 5 to 7 minutes to present and you get so occupied about telling everything that you forget to share what you actually do . Seasoned investor Vinod Khosla once remarked about investor pitches, "80% of the presentations… you don’t even know w...